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Elvis Costello doesn't talk to the press. This is why Costello called a news conference on March 30, the Friday afternoon before New York's "Elvis Costello Weekend"; post of the rock press was taken by shock.
Of course, we had no reason to be shocked; we were shocked because we had made the assumption that Elvis might want to talk about his music, which of course he didn't. If any of us had stopped to think, we could've seen a press conference coming as we saw the infamous Bonnie Bramlett/Steven Stills incident blowing up to ridiculous proportions; a press conference to clear up the mess was logical.
Let me begin by saying that I don't honestly care about what happened in that bar in Columbus, Ohio. I know Elvis isn't a racist; his songs over 3 LPs have continually expressed anti-racist sentiments, & he has done numerous benefits for Rock-Against-Racism, an important fact which, curiously he did not mention during his plea of defense. I accept Elvis' side of the story; he was drunk, and wanted to piss someone off just for the sake of really wanting to piss someone off, a charming habit Elvis has adopted of late. So he made some clearly deliberate racist statements to these people he wanted to annoy, just for the sake of pissing 'em off. It worked. A fight ensued, and Elvis and Attraction Pete Thomas were left on the floor (Elvis with a near-dislocated shoulder that left his arm in a sling and came close to forcing him to postpone his immediate shows). But more importantly, alarming tales of El's racism were spread over the nation's papers, all the way from the New York Times to full feature in People.
As I don't care about the incident, I don't especially care what EC had to say about it. But we have to take what we can
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